Collaborative and Capacity Building Projects

AAUP members take part in a number of collaborative and cooperative publishing projects—within institutions, across institutions, and between presses.

2015 Capacity Building Mellon Grants

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has invested significant resources in building the capacity of scholarly publishing and university presses to innovate and creatively meet the opportunities new digital technologies and networks offer. See "Piecing Together Publishing" by Carl Straumsheim (Inside Higher Ed, February 25, 2015) for an overview of the funding initiative.

Eight of these grants (marked with an *) were featured in an AAUP 2015 plenary session titled "How Can Universities and Their Presses Co-evolve?" See below for background materials on these and other new projects. Video of the session is available online, presentations begin at the 50 minute mark.

University of California Press and California Digital Library: OA Content Management Solution*This grant will help develop a web-based, open source content and workflow management system to support the publication of open access (OA) monographs in the humanities and social sciences. When complete, this system will be made available to the community of academic publishers, especially university presses and library publishers. March 2015 announcement • Summary for AAUP 2015

Johns Hopkins University Press: MUSE OpenMUSE Open will leverage the trusted distibution channel of Project MUSE for open long-form scholarly monographs through the trusted Project MUSE, making such content available with greater visibility and discoverability.June 2015 announcement • July 16 update

University of Michigan Press and Partners: Hosted Platform for Digital Monographic Source Material*Michigan Publishing, working in collaboration with the presses at Indiana, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Penn State, intends to create a hosted platform for managing monographic source materials that is native to the modern collaborative infrastructure environment. The project will expand on the existing Hydra/Fedora repositiry infrastructure.April 2015 announcement • Summary for AAUP 2015

University of Minnesota Press and CUNY GC Digital Scholarship Lab: Manifold Scholarship*Manifold Scholarship moves beyond the digitization of scholarly books into an emerging hybrid environment for scholarship, where scholarly publishers will develop, alongside the print edition of a book, an alternate form of publication that is networked and iterative, served on an interactive, open-source platform.April 2015 announcement • Summary for AAUP 2015

NYU Press and NYU Libraries: Enhanced Networked Monographs*The goal of this project is to balance the needs of scholars, publishers, libraries, and readers in the creation of online works that may contain media and archival content in multiple formats, can be produced efficiently, are easily discoverable, and both invite and measure reader engagement. NYU will work with partners at Michigan and Minnesota to capitalize on the related infrasructure projects those presses are spearheading.Summary for AAUP 2015

University of North Carolina Press: Collaborating to Scale Digital Publishing Services*Built on UNC's existing Longleaf Services fulfillment company, UNC will create a scaled platform where university presses can collaborate to achieve cost efficiencies on a broad range of digital publishing activities, including copyediting, composition, production, operations, and marketing services.January 2015 announcement

Stanford University Press: Validated, Peer-Reviewed Processes for Interactive Digital Scholarship*This project seeks to bring the same rigor and prestige as traditional university press monograph publishing to the production of interactive forms of digital scholarship. In addition to developing a system and framework for publishing digital-born scholarship, SUP will develop a cost-basis for publishing digital objects and establish an example of publishing practices that other publishers can emulate, adopt or adapt.January 2015 announcement • Summary for AAUP 2015

West Virginia University: Vega*Scheduled for release in 2018, Vega will be an online, free and open-source system that will help editors of scholarly multimedia journals, books and data sets engage in building and reading multimedia-rich, peer-reviewed content. Spearheaded by scholar Cheryl Ball, Vega will be housed in teh WVU Libraries and will work on development with the WVU Press journals program.February 2015 announcement • Summary for AAUP 2015

Yale University Press: E-portal for Art and Architectural History*The planned portal will make text and images available electronically at a reasonable cost or for free. Users also will be able to customize the content, making course packs or creating other digital publications from a variety of texts. The portal will launch with content from Yale and the Art Institute of Chicago, and the long-term goal is to bring other museum and art publishers' content into the portal.January 2015 announcement

Collaborative Projects and Initiatives

ACLS Humanities E-Book ProjectHumanities E-Book is a digital collection of 2,200 full-text titles offered by the ACLS in collaboration with nineteen learned societies, nearly 100 contributing publishers, and librarians at the University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office. Forty-five AAUP members contribute to the Project. The result is an online, fully searchable collection of high-quality books in the Humanities, recommended and reviewed by scholars and featuring unlimited multi-user access and free, downloadable MARC records.

American Literatures Initiative (ALI)This initiative will publish emerging scholars’ first books in the English-language literatures of Central and North America and the Caribbean. A shared, centralized, external editorial service will be created to handle all editorial and production aspects of ALI books. New York University Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press were awarded a 2008 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for the ALI.

Archaeology of the Americas Digital Monograph Initiative In 2009, six AAUP members were awarded a planning grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop a digital collection of archaeology scholarship on the Americas. The AADMI was intended to give scholars and professional archaeologists the ability to review data not commonly found in conventionally published volumes. Participating publishers were the University Press of Colorado, Texas A&M University Press, University of Alabama Press, University of Arizona Press, University Press of Florida, and University of Utah Press.

Art History Publishing Initiative Four university presses (Duke University Press, Pennsylvania State University Press, University of Pennsylvania Press, University of Washington Press) were awarded a five-year, $1,257,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to publish 40 first books by art history scholars. The initiative aims to make art historical scholarship more widely accessible in both print and electronic forms. Read the January 2011 announcement.

California Studies Initiative The University of California Press was awarded a grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in partnership with the UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), the UC California Studies Consortium (UCCSC), and the California Digital Library (CDL). The press and its partner institutions received $722,000 to fund a strategic initiative in California Studies. The grant will support the creation of a journal, a working papers collection, and an annual conference in this emerging field. Read the April 2009 announcement.

Early American Places Three AAUP members—the University of Georgia Press, NYU Press, and Northern Illinois University Press—received a 2009 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to fund a collaborative book series. The $648,000 five-year grant supports the publication of revised dissertations on early North American History. The collaborating presses’ responsibilities are divided geographically.

Ethnomusicology Multimedia Indiana University Press, Kent State University Press, and Temple University Press are collaborating on the development of an innovative series of first books in ethnomusicology to be accompanied by a web-based platform for hosting audio and video materials integral to the authors’ research. The publishers are working with Indiana University's Ethnomusicological Video for Instruction and Analysis Digital Archive (EVIADA) and Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities (IDAH) to develop software for the project. EM received both planning and implementation grants from the Mellon Foundation, the first publications are expected in 2011. Read the October 2009 announcement.

First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a $1-million collaborative grant for the publication of first books in the field of Indigenous Studies to the University of Arizona Press, the University of North Carolina Press, the University of Minnesota Press, and Oregon State University Press. The grant will support junior scholars as they develop their first books and will allow them to participate in a centralized and dedicated marketing effort. The presses aim to publish 40 books during the grant's four-year funding period.

Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World A grant for the establishment of a new book series that will publish first books in folklore studies was awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the University of Illinois Press, the University Press of Mississippi, and the University of Wisconsin Press, in partnership with the American Folklore Society.

The History CooperativeFour leaders in historical scholarship and cutting-edge technology joined forces in 2000 to create a premier resource for historians on the Web. The American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the University of Illinois Press, and the National Academy Press have launched the History Cooperative, where for the first time, the full text of current issues of the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History was available electronically to members of the AHA and OAH and to institutions that subscribe to the print versions of the journals. More than 20 additional history journals have joined the Cooperative, as well as numerous conference proceedings and the Booker T. Washington Papers Online from the University of Illinois Press.

History of Science InitiativeUniversity of Pittsburgh Press and partners the University of Pittsburgh Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Department of History’s World History Center were awarded a five-year, $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to pursue a book publishing initiative in the history of science.

Modern Language Initiative (MLI) In February 2009, the Mellon Foundation awarded a collaborative publishing grant of $1.16 million to Fordham University Press, University of California Press (FlashPoints series), University of Pennsylvania Press, University of Virginia Press, and University of Washington Press. The initiative will focus on the publication of scholarly books on the literatures of the non-Anglophone world.

Project Euclid Duke University Press and Cornell University Library have established a joint venture to expand and enhance the services provided by Project Euclid. Since its launch in 2003, Project Euclid has been recognized worldwide as a premiere online environment for the distribution of high-impact, peer-reviewed literature in theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics. Project Euclid features searchable PDF article files, COUNTER 2– and SUSHI-compliant usage statistics, interoperability through the Open Archives Initiative, and full-text searches across the entire collection.

Project MUSE Project MUSE provides online, institutional, worldwide subscription access to the current full text and more than 10 years of selected archives for more than 400 scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts. Established in 1995, MUSE is managed by the Johns Hopkins University Press, in collaboration with the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University and the almost 100 participating university press and not-for-profit publishers. MUSE currently offers six journal collections to meet the needs of a variety of library subscribers, with a tiered, affordable pricing model and library-friendly license terms.

Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement The University of North Carolina Press and UNC Chapel Hill were awarded a three-year Mellon grant for this innovative print and digital publication project. Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement seeks to inspire scholarly collaboration and develop new ways of creating and sharing scholarship on the civil rights movement.

Quadrant The University of Minnesota Press and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota have received funding for a interdisciplinary research and publication project, which will create research residencies for scholars and endeavor to publish the fruits of such research. Quadrant will itself be composed of four collaborative groups: Design and Architecture, Environmental Sustainability, Global Cultures, and Health and Society.

Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought Cornell University Press, partnering with Cornell University Library and Cornell faculty in the Departments of German Studies, Comparative Literature, History, Music and Philosophy launched a new English-language book series covering the literature, culture, criticism and intellectual history of the German-speaking world ­ will be published in electronic format and in short print runs backed up by trade-quality bound books produced on a print-on-demand basis. The innovative cross-campus model involves extensive collaboration between the partners. With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the full text of many of the Signale books will be available online for free.

Slavic Studies The University of Wisconsin Press, Northwestern University Press, and the University of Pittsburgh Press received Mellon Foundation funding to allow the three presses to publish and promote first monographs in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies by junior scholars, helping those scholars in developing their careers by supporting their development as authors and arranging for book tours.

South Asia Across the Disciplines Columbia University Press, the University of California Press, and the University of Chicago Press received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for South Asia Across the Disciplines. The initiative will focus on giving scholars increased access to archival materials, exploring new methods and theories, and foster cross-discipline scholarship that is both broad and deep. The initiative, will build upon the strength of each university’s faculty, appointing Dipesh Chakrabarty (Chicago, history), Sheldon Pollock (Columbia, literature), and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (UCLA, history) as series editors. The aim is to publish six monographs per year, with each press responsible for two series editions.

UPCC/MUSE EditionsThe University Press Content Consortium is a partnership between UPeC (the Mellon-funded University Press e-Book Consortium) and Project MUSE, to make digital collections of university press monographs available. The UPCC collections are expected to launch in January 2012.

University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO)Oxford University Press revamped its Oxford Scholarship Online platform to support the e-book collections of other non-profit scholarly publishers. Fordham University Press was the first press to join the UPSO project.

Do you have news to submit to AAUPNet.org?AAUP members can submit news of prizes, collaborative and digital publishing project descriptions, and personnel announcements to Brenna McLaughlin at bmclaughlin@aaupnet.org.